


Gift of Peace

by spaceliquid



Category: The Banner Saga (Video Games)
Genre: Aging, Family Feels, Gen, Post-Canon, Spoilers for TBS3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 21:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19450108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceliquid/pseuds/spaceliquid
Summary: Three moments in the lives of the dredge baby and its adoptive human mother.





	1. Chapter 1

Walking around the caravan was something Iver did regularly. Varl he may be, but he couldn't leave Rook to care for the people alone. So Iver promised his friend to check up on the clansmen while Rook was catching some uneasy sleep in his tent under Alette's watchful eyes.

The humans knew what Iver was doing and sent appreciating smiles his way. Some even invited him to take a short rest at their campfires. Sometimes Iver even accepted these offers.

But this time, when he sat down on a log next to a small bonfire, he immediately regretted it.

A woman was sitting next to him, and two round yellow eyes were staring at Iver from the bundle in her arms.

Iver stiffened, his gaze immediately darting to the opposite side, landing on anything but the child.

He had been avoiding the dredge baby like fire ever since they picked it up. It was a silent accusation; a reminder of another child he killed many years ago. Maybe also an atonement... But Iver couldn't forget how he wanted to abandon it and run away like a coward.

A high-pitched trilling sound caught his attention and made him look to his left before he could stop himself. The baby – now Iver could see it well, round bandaged face and tiny arms – was making those trills, reaching its hands for Iver.

“Silje! Calm the slag down!” An old man from across the bonfire barked. The woman – Silje – sent a nasty glare in his direction and pressed the baby to her chest.

“Shh, little one.” She gave Iver an apologetic smile. “Sorry. He seems to like you.”

Iver couldn't pretend to ignore the baby anymore.

“He?”

“It's a boy,” Silje said, rocking the child slightly. “He makes these sounds when he's happy, I think.”

The baby trilled again, arms outstretched towards Iver. Curious despite himself, Iver leaned in, and tiny obsidian hands landed on his horns, slapping them lightly. The baby chirped and cooed, and Silje smiled.

“Likes your horns, huh? Maybe you remind him of his father.”

Iver's blood froze in his veins.

“What?” he gasped.

Silje hesitated, troubled by his reaction.

“I mean... Some dredge seem to have those horns on their helmets... Maybe his father had them?”

Iver couldn't answer, because the old man interfered again.

“Silje! Enough of this nonsense! You're annoying our guest!” He stood up and limped to Iver. “I apologize, noble Iver. This woman has been acting crazy ever since her daughter died two months ago. I will tell her to keep the little slag away...”

“It's alright,” Iver interrupted, standing up too. “I'm glad the child is in good hands.” He nodded at Silje, if a little awkwardly. “Please tell me if you or the infant need anything.” He gave another nod to the shocked old man and hurried away from the bonfire.

But the tight knot inside his chest seemed to have loosened a little.


	2. Chapter 2

The Darkness is gone, and the sun moves across the sky again. But the greatest miracle of all is the peace in Arberrang that is still holding. The Lasting Peace, it's already being called, in hopes to make the name true.

All the survivors want is to start their lives anew – normal, ordinary lives. There is enough land for everyone within and outside the walls - so the horseborn run freely through the once-warped plains, searching for food, and the varl do not complain as they carry heavy timbers to build new homes, while the dredge raise strong walls of granite where Arberrang's wooden defenses used to be. Still, each race keeps to themselves, and very soon Arberrang splits in districts, the borders between them unmarked yet clear.

In the morning of a bright sunny day, a human woman stood at the invisible border separating the dredge settlement from the rest of the city. The separation was obvious in the encampment's very look: the hastily-built shelters had rectangular shapes and flat roofs, there were no smokes from fireplaces visible, and the figures wandering around the shelters were clad in dark stone.

Silje bit her lip, shifting from foot to foot as she looked over the dredge settlement. So far no one approached her, although a couple of armed giants – guards, perhaps? - cast unreadable glances at her. But the dredge kept their distance, letting the human make the first move... And Silje couldn't find courage to make it.

What did she think when she came here? She couldn't even talk to them, how was she supposed to find anyone?

She didn't think, that's what. For days she's been restless, failing to concentrate on her chores during the day and writhing on her meager bed at night, the loneliness suffocating. She came here on a whim, when she couldn't take it anymore – but she had no plan, and now she did not know what to do.

“Are you lost, girlie?”

Silje almost jumped and turned around to see an unfamiliar woman. She was human, but weird – there was red paint on her face, her arms were covered in open wounds, and she was leaning on a horned staff.

“No, I'm...” Silje was so distracted by the strange woman's appearance that she forgot what she was asked for a moment. “Sorry. I was just... I'm looking for someone.”

“There?” The woman tilted her head in the dredge camp's direction.

“Yes, I wanted... I hoped... I mean, I know he's better off with his own people, but I just... wanted to see my baby again.” Silje worried the hem of her sleeve with her fingers. “Just... to make sure he's alright, that he has a family to take care of him.”

“Ah!” The woman's face brightened. “You are the one who nursed little gift of peace!” She tilted her head again, this time studying Silje with renewed interest. “Well then, come with me.” She tapped her staff and headed towards the dredge shelters.

For a moment Silje stood where she was, gaping, and then hurried after the woman.

“You know where he is?! Wait, what is your name?”

“I'm Alfrun,” the woman replied, not looking back. “Let's go check up on your son.”

***

Silje walked behind Alfrun, casting wary yet curious glances around her. Here, in the middle of the maze of tents and shelters, she could see the settlement's normal life and inhabitants. She barely recognized the dredge slingers without their armor: now, when most of them only wore simple long dresses, it was obvious they were women, and most of them stopped whatever they were doing to look at the two humans. Children were running between the tents, and at a certain point two of them almost bumped into Silje, but stopped in time and stared at her with wide round eyes. Their gazes did not bother Silje, though, but rather made her smile; children would always be children, fascinated by everything new and unusual.

Alfrun navigated the camp like she knew it through and through, and she stopped a couple of times to exchange some humming and droning sounds with passerby dredge. Alfrun made those sounds with her staff, and Silje watched it with awe: it seemed like Alfrun was communicating with the dredge!

Finally, Alfrun made one last turn and stopped on a clearing between two makeshift huts made of stone and wood. In the middle of the clearing, two dredge – a large man and a woman in a wide stone mask – were sitting on the ground. The man was cutting a piece of leather, his horned helmet lying next to him, and the woman was holding up a child.

Silje gasped, pressing her hands to her chest.

“Dari!”

Both dredge stiffened and looked up at her exclamation, but the child blinked and made a trilling sound, stretching its arms.

Silje's vision blurred as tears welled up in her eyes.

“Dari, oh, Dari...” She covered her face, trying to control herself. “You're alright...”

Alfrun tapped her staff, making a series of humming sounds, and the dredge couple responded. But all Silje could see was Dari, her little baby whom she nursed on her chest, who used to sleep next to her, a warm bundle of life and quiet breaths, who grew up so quickly and needed constant attention as he attempted to crawl away to explore, who was taken from her to make peace with the dredge and never brought back... Another child she lost.

A new trill made Silje open her eyes, and she saw Dari make uncertain, wobbly steps towards her. She dropped to her knees, catching him before he could fall, breath stuck in her throat as she felt his warmth again. He grew since she last saw him, and he walked! He walked!

The dredge woman made a series of sounds, which finally made Silje look at her.

“She apologizes,” Alfrun said, and Silje turned her head to her. “She says that they did not know they were separating the child from its mother.”

Silje's eyes widened, and Alfrun continued:

“She says you clearly love him.”

“I do,” Silje said quietly, pressing Dari to her chest. “I might not be his real mother, but he became my son. But he is better off with his own people, I understand. I just... wanted to see him one last time.”

“Does it have to be last?”

Silje cast a shocked glance at the dredge couple.

“But I thought...”

The dredge woman moved closer to Silje and sat down next to her, touching Dari's back. She hummed something Silje couldn't understand, but the sound was soothing.

“She says that separating you two would be wrong... especially since the boy calls you mother too.”

“What?” Silje gawked at Alfrun. “He... _calls_ me mother?”

A smile was playing on Alfrun's usually stern face.

“That sound he made when he saw you? That means mama.”

“He called me mama?” Silje felt tears filling her eyes again and wiped them off, suddenly too happy to be crying. “Gods...” She looked back at Dari, and then at the dredge woman. “When I was nursing him,” she told the woman, and the hum of Alfrun's staff followed her words, “people were telling me that I was a fool. That he would never even be able to speak. And look at him now! He called me mama.” She smiled softly. “You taught him that. He should be with his people. But if you allow it... I would be happy to help raising him.”

The dredge woman listened to Alfrun's translation, her face unreadable behind the stone mask - yet, strangely, that lack of expression did not bother Silje anymore. All she saw was another person who cared for Dari – and that made Silje's heart swell with warmth. Her baby had people who loved him.

“She says you are welcome here any time you want,” Alfrun translated the dredge woman's reply. “And that it seems little gift of peace will have everything in double.”

That turn of phrase was familiar.

“Gift of Peace?” Silje asked. “You already called him this way, didn't you?”

“That's his sculptor... dredge name.” Alfrun was still smiling. “Everything in double indeed.”


	3. Chapter 3

In Arberrang the apple trees are blooming.

They are still young, these apple trees. They grew from the seeds that were planted after the Darkness dispersed, and when the frail saplings bloomed for the first time, the entire city celebrated the return of life. Ever since then, it became a yearly festival.

Dari walks after his mother, carrying her basket as they head to the market. The wind is still chilly, yet every gust carries a flurry of white petals with it, and Dari's mother smiles, even as she wraps her woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders.

“What a lovely spring,” she sighs, tucking a strand of grey hair behind her ear. “Let's see if anyone sells spring onions already.”

They do find spring onions, and even some radishes that a horseborn merchant brought from Dalalond in the far south. He tries to raise the price for them, but Dari frowns at him from behind his mother's back, his towering figure casting a deep shadow over the merchant. The horseborn immediately lowers the price to reasonable, and even after they leave Dari feels the merchant's shocked stare on his back.

Ulf, the human shoemaker who has a stand next to the horseborn, just chuckles. “Hello Silje, hello Dari,” he says, and Dari nods to him in reply. Him carrying his tiny old mother's basket is a common sight at the market, and the citizens of Arberrang don't bat an eyelash at the weird pair.

Dari has three mothers. He doesn't remember his first mother, the one who gave birth to him, but he has a small silver brooch – the only thing that is left of her. Queen Alette herself gave him the brooch when Dari was a little boy.

“It has a protective spell on it,” Alette said, wrapping his fingers around the brooch. “Your mom put it on your swaddling, and it protected you. She must've loved you very much.”

Dari wears the brooch even now, but the first mother he remembers is Silje. She took him in and nursed him when he was a baby, carrying him all the way from Godstone Ingrid to Arberrang. Mother Silje is human; her long black hair that little Dari liked to play with are grey now, and her face is covered in wrinkles. It is... scary.

“Go. Be with her while you can,” mother Bluespark often says. She is the third mother Dari knows; she taught him to speak and to carve stone, and she gave him his second name – the one Dari actually can pronounce. He is Gift of Peace to mother Bluespark and the sculptors, and Dari to mother Silje and the humans.

When Queen Alette united everyone against the Darkness, she returned Dari to his people, and mother Bluespark happily took him as her own. But mother Silje still came to see him all the time, and so Dari grew up with two mothers, both loving and kind.

But while mother Bluespark remained the same, mother Silje aged. She looks horribly frail now, her once proud back bent and her eyes squinting as she tries to see better. She forgets where she puts her things and doesn't notice when visiting merchants try to sell her radishes for three times the price.

“ _We have time,” mother Bluespark says as she works at her loom. “But humans grow old and die. No one knows how many springs your mother has left. Be with her while you can.”_

So Dari carries mother Silje's basket home, and lights up the hearth in her house, and gives her the unfinished embroidery when she starts looking for it.

“Thank you, my boy,” mother Silje says, smiling at him as she sits down in her chair next to the hearth. “Ah, you grew up so tall! And I still remember how tiny you were when we found you. It was near the Godstone Ingrid; Rook was still the clan leader back then...”

Dari heard this story many times; mother Silje repeats it often now, along with several other stories. But he keeps quiet and lets his mother tell it again, in the same exact words, as always.

“ _Let her be happy,” mother Bluespark says, and her loom sings under her fingers. “Humans are not like us, they weaken with age. Take care of her.”_

It's terrifying, how mother Silje changed. Yet when she looks at Dari, her eyes shine with the same love she had always had for him, and Dari's terror morphs into gentle sadness. She gives him a bowl of soup with fresh spring onions, and he hums a “thank you” - one of the few sculptor words mother Silje understands.

She puts her chin on her hand as she watches him eat, and smiles.

“What a handsome boy you are,” she says. “I can't wait for the day when you will bring home a girl.”

Dari almost sputters the soup and coughs. _“Mom!”_ he rumbles, but Silje just continues with a twinkle in her eyes:

“Oh, don't be so shy! There must be some girl that caught your attention. What about the blacksmith's daughter? She seems nice.”

Dari wishes he had a stonesinger's mask to hide his embarrassment right now. Growing up with a human mother, he is much worse at controlling his emotions than his kin.

And he barely even knows the blacksmith's daughter! They spoke what, twice? Besides, she's so pretty, with her pale yellow eyes and wiry figure... She probably has ten suitors lining up in front of her house.

Mother Silje laughs and pats his arm, her narrow wrinkly hand looking especially frail compared to his broad forearm.

“Now, now, forgive the old woman. I just hope to live long enough to see my grandchildren. They would be so small, so precious... Just like you when you were a baby. Do you know how we found you? It was near the Godstone Ingrid; Rook was still the clan leader back then...”

So Dari sits back, sips his soup and listens – for this is the only way he can help his mother now.


End file.
